I think if the me from ten years ago knew that I would become a Magic designer, he would be overjoyed to the point of tears that all that work and all that thought meant something. I'm grateful to be here making cards for you all. Happy holidays 💜

I believe that the difference between an average and great game designer is whether you design towards something. Games are emotional experiences packaged in a box – do you know what your game is trying to make people feel, or are you stepping back and letting the mechanics decide?

Then the Great Designer Search happened and I became #wotcstaff, thanks in great part to what I learned as an indie game designer. I continue to crush it to this day 😎

The first game I made after that convention was a marked improvement from my previous two, which were impactful basically on accident. Stand Back, Citizen! was the first indication I had that my new, more thoughtful method of design produced incredible results

(Nothing wrong with dry intellectual puzzles, I own and enjoy many of them, but they aren't what I'm good at designing or what I wanted to design)

I learned from that weekend that what I want out of my designs is something that captures your heart. Something that you want to tell all your friends just happened. So I decided that in the future, I would only design games with extremely high emotional impact, rather than dry intellectual puzzles

There's some really cool mechanics and individual cards coming next year and I can't wait to see what you think about them!

We eventually settled for singling out warped cards in the text of the void effect, which is wordy and inelegant but allowed both mechanics to follow whatever timings they want. Void also went from caring about creatures and artifacts to any nonland permanent at some point

However, warped cards leave the battlefield at the beginning of your end step, which means that end-step void effects won't see them, which is both frustrating and unintuitive. We tried making warp cards exile at the end of your combat, but that made the timing a lot more annoying for that mechanic

Being able to access void effects on your end step is an important design tool for this kind of mechanic – it allows players to play the card whenever they want on their turn and in general makes keeping track of effects easier

...that said, while void never changed substantially, there was certainly a lot of debate over the small details. Void's biggest issue was its coexistence with warp, which ostensibly synergized with it but had weird timing issues

1. Andrew Brown, the set lead, recommended we use a morbid variant. It playtested well. THE END

Oh yeah you finally reminded me to show you this video

If there's one thing I like doing it's coming up with names for design concepts 🫡

I am so happy Kill-Ship deals 10 damage instead of destroying, those little touches are important

I was the only big anime fan on the team, and though I have seen part of Outlaw Star, for some reason the only space opera anime I could think of at the time was Legend of the Galactic Heroes

Can you put *NSYNC on the deck box and sleeves please

Unending Whisper, Colossal Plow, Wash Away immediately come to mind as cool stuff you can do in the format

Warp is also a highly textured mechanic – it works with effects that care about things entering or leaving the battlefield, "cast from exile" synergies, station, flicker effects, checking for high power or mana value, and so on. A perfect mechanic to center an entire set around!