Where’s the Drawback?
Let’s play a game. It’s called “which Magic cards have a drawback?”
Ready? Go!
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
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You have your answer? Good.
Before I talk about the cards, I want to talk about drawbacks in design.
A lot of people think a drawback is a line of text that specifically hurts you. Abyssal Persecutor is a good example of this. Sometimes the card’s drawback is overt, and in those cases it’s often for a good reason. With Persecutor, you see the offer that the card is presenting you with. It’s what makes the card interesting. However, in reality, a lot more cards have drawbacks than you think.
I was talking with Pat Chapin a few weeks ago, and he said something to the effect of, “almost every card has some kind of drawback.” I think that’s pretty spot on. Look at all the cards you like to play with. Fetchlands are a great example. They have a pretty clear drawback – but how often do you really notice as your Plated Geopede kicks in there for an extra two damage, or you shuffle your library to see new cards with Jace? Yet they are beloved cards.
Part of being a designer is knowing how to hide your drawbacks.
Why? Because drawbacks are how you balance cards. The problem is that you naturally feel bad if you have to manage a drawback somehow. Yet, drawbacks are how most cards are balanced. How is this done? Well, if you go down the above list, some of those cards might seem “all-upside.” However, I think you can peg every card on it as having a drawback.
Let me show you what I mean
Look at Slinking Giant. I think it’s pretty obvious he has a drawback. Now how does he look when you word him this way?
Slinking Giant 2RR
Creature – Giant Rogue
Wither
Whenever Slinking Giant attacks and isn’t blocked, it gets +3/+0 until end of turn.
1/4
Now doesn’t he feel much better to play with? Instead of having something taken away, you’re getting something. It’s a basic psychological principle. Now, there are reasons he was made the way he was (among other things, a 1/4 Giant is a little oddball) but it’s amazing how you can make this one switch and he no longer feels like a creature with a drawback.
Let’s look at Chrome Steed now.
You can do the same kind of trick with Chrome Steed if you think of it as a 4/4 that gets -2/-2 if you don’t have three artifacts. That should be clear. However, Chrome Steed also plays off of another kind of drawback: the linear drawback. The other, less apparent drawback of Chrome Steed is that you have to play with a lot of artifacts to make him good. Yet, it doesn’t feel like a true drawback in that sense. Once again, it feels like a benefit. The drawback is subtly hidden.
You can see this even more on Elder Pine of Jukai.
Once again, it seems like an all-upside card. However, the true drawback is that you have to play him in a deck with Spirit and Arcane spells. Just as Abyssal Persecutor only fits into decks that are built with the ability to remove him, Elder Pine only fits into decks where his ability can be abused.
But what of the other three? Let’s look at Scoria Elemental.
The drawback shouldn’t be too hard to spot here, yet when you’re not looking for it the drawback might fade into the background. The one toughness is a pretty significant drawback in exchange for 6 power for five mana at common. However, it doesn’t leap out at you in the sense that a prohibitive line of text might.
With that simple one out of the way, let’s look at Hoard-Smelter Dragon
You might be thinking, “alright, where’s the drawback?” You can scour the text box over and over and never find anything but pure, liquid, delicious upside. You can look over the power and toughness, but no matter how many times you look it doesn’t change into a 3/3. (Much to a Limited player’s chagrin.) This card has a gigantic drawback though, and it’s located in the upper right hand corner: the cost.
Once a card’s cost hits five mana, it starts getting fairly taxing on your resources at any point during the game. Making a card like this cost six is a balance concern, no doubt, but it’s also a drawback in the same sense. Once again, to make a card this powerful you have to give it a prohibitive cost. It most certainly is an issue of balance, but, simultaneously, it is an issue of applying an appropriate drawback.
Pyromancer’s Ascension is the last card on the list. It’s many things: a wacky Johnny card, a combo enabler, a goal to strive for. (More on goals in another blog post.) But it also has a significant drawback: it does nothing until it turns on.
Now, cognitively you can maybe perceive it as doing something while counters are added, but in reality it actually just sits there and does nothing until it has two counters. Until a condition is met, your card does absolutely nothing: that’s a pretty serious drawback if you ask me. But it doesn’t look like a drawback. No. It looks like a challenge.
Once again, it’s an issue of balance – but also an issue of having a drawback. How much would something have to cost to just naturally copy all of your spells? Well, compare to Cloven Casting for an idea of what you might need to pay. By giving the card a drawback posed as a challenge, you take the focus off the drawback and onto the challenge the card presents.
I understand viewing all cards this way is a bit reductionist and actually very dangerous if used too heavy-handedly. However, it’s an interesting design exercise. More importantly, though, it shows you that you don’t have to explicitly list you drawback in text. That just leads to making people feel bad. There are a lot of ways you can balance cards using “drawbacks” without resorting to awkward lines of text.
Written out drawbacks when they serve an important purpose, but they’re definitely not necessary all of the time. Making your drawbacks too obvious is one of the largest mistakes in design – and one that’s easy to avoid.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
about 12 years ago
So here’s one for you: is Grizzly Bears a Carapace Forger with a drawback?
When drawing with a pencil, an artist spends time adding shadows. But in the context of the object depicted, a shadow is just an absence of light.
As such, the design weakness you refer to isn’t so much making drawbacks too obvious as making cards too obvious. Or, as we might more naturally put it, too easy to evaluate.
about 12 years ago
I don’t really know if I would say a Grizzly Bear really has a drawback. It’s the baseline for it’s stats that other cards are compared to.
Carapace Forger doesn’t so much have a drawback because it’s efficient for its stats and only costs 2 so it doesn’t tax your mana. Compare to Chrome Steed which is certainly inefficient as a 4 mana 2/2.
I’m sure there are plenty of holes in my argument similar to what you have pointed out if you look deep enough through Magic’s history. There are so many ways to look at different cards that eventually it becomes a game of “is this a drawback? What about this?” What I was trying to get at, though, was not how drawbacks are applied but how they appear. (Read below.)
As for obvious drawbacks versus obvious cards, I agree entirely. Perhaps I was a bit reductionist (which is very dangerous), but the basic idea I wanted to convey is that you don’t need to actually write “this has a drawback” on a card to give it a drawback. I think it is good for cards to not have too much to remember, and by slotting a drawback into another area of the card (like power/toughness or cost) you help mitigate that.
Thanks for the comment!
about 12 years ago
I disagree with you on Chrome Steed. That seems all upside to me, as its worded now. A four mana 2/2 might be inefficient and bad, but that doesn’t mean it has a drawback. It just means it’s bad. I don’t see any difference between Chrome Steed and Carapace Forger. Obviously the Forger is better without support, but neither one is close to constructed viable at the moment- they’re both just bad. The fact that the Forger is closer to being good doesn’t mean that the Steed has a drawback and the Forger doesn’t.
about 12 years ago
I would say that both have a draw back; they force you to play a lot of artifacts to be mana-efficient.
1G is not really a baseline cost for a 2/2 as far as say, standard goes. A 2/1 costs W so a 2/2 is only slighty more that that (1/4 – 1/2 of a mana maybe?) This means that the draw backs of Forger are twofold: Over-costed in terms of mana when turned ‘off’, and deck building limitations in order for it to be turned ‘on’.
The same is true for the steed however it will never be truly mana-efficient as a 4/4 for 4 (see: Thrun, the Last Troll), hence why it will never see serious constructed play because of its stats*.
*I specify this because it has the type artifact, and history dictates we pay that fact at least some respect.