Those of you following the contest on the mothership may have wondered how competitive the contestants are with each other or how much our ideas are our own. Those of you following us on Twitter already know that while we are all trying our best to win this thing, like most Magic players, we're still friendly and we still support each other. And we get a LOT of ideas from the community.

Regardless of how the contest turns out, we're all grateful to have made it this far and we've already learned some important lessons about design that we'd like to share with you.

Ethan Fleischer

The most important thing that I've taken away from participating in this contest so far is that in Magic design, as in so many other things, there is a challenging gulf between understanding things in principle and applying them in practice. I've encountered this lesson several times in my life, when engaging in creative disciplines that involve a high degree of complexity, and it makes me appreciate the craft involved in Magic design all the more.

I perceive a kinship between Magic design and animation, in this regard. As an animation student, I was bombarded with all sorts of technical advice, not only on how to draw things clearly, but how to make a drawings communicate realistic motion when they appear in sequence on the screen. Characters need to draw back in anticipation of motion, perform their main action, and then Recover from that action, lest they appear to be mass-less. Hair, clothing, and even hands need to trail behind the main ction. Actions need to Accelerate and decelerate as appropriate during a movement. While keeping these and many other things in mind, an animator must draw hundreds of clear pictures of characters that keep the same proportions and facial features from drawing to drawing. At first, it's impossible to keep all of these things in mind simultaneously, but with practice they become second nature, no longer requiring conscious thought.

My impression is that Magic design is similar. All of the finalists in the Great Designer Search have been soaking up design lessons from Mark Rosewater's column and from their own play experiences. I know that blocks need a unifying mechanic, but I failed to Recall that fact in the heat of the moment of working on my design test, my biggest blunder so far. The difference between knowing something intellectually and being able to apply it habitually is, to me, one of the biggest challenges of this contest. Fortunately, in creative pursuits involving a high degree of craft, practice moves these lessons from memory that must be recalled to habits that are hard to break. Whichever of us wins this contest will find the road ahead to be much easier, I think, than the road we're walking now.

Jonathon Loucks

Keep it simple.

Shawn Main

Flavor matters!

Initially, I worried that I had spent too much time imagining the background for my world. I thought that, of course, any design innovations would be much more significant than finding the right flavor. So I was caught off guard when the judges asked me to shift my focus from tokens onto the Blight.

It wasn't until the second day of looking at crazy Blight possibilities that what I was being asked to do really clicked. I had been fixated on finding ways to make token strategies viable, but I had ignored what it would feel like to actually play those strategies. I imagined each new mechanic as it could be shoehorned into each color rather than considering where it would fit most naturally. My attention was in the wrong place.

I realize now that it's not enough for cards do something interesting mechanically. They need to create resonance so that their effect on the game can feel like it means something. They need to play into their colors' methods and goals. If you were to strip the name off traps or the keyword off devour, their flavor would be intact. What I've learned is that designers need to be storytellers, using card mechanics to create an atmosphere, at least as much as they need to be innovators, exploring new interactions for those mechanics.

Devon Rule

The most surprising lesson I've learned from the GDS2 so far is to listen to your critics, even when they're wrong.

When I was putting together my original design test submission, one of my favorite cards was an enchantment named Idealism. It gave all of your enchantments Lifelink, and had a lot of interesting interactions. When my submission started to attract critiques, I was repeatedly annoyed by a substantial number of people insulting the card because they didn't realize that it worked with noncreature enchantments as well. I scoffed that my cards were being misjudged by people who didn't understand them.

When it was finally time for the judges to respond to our cards, Rosewater's comment on idealism was effectively, "This card would be too difficult for new players to understand." Whoops. By ignoring the incorrect assumptions of others, I failed to realize that the fault was actually on my end for designing an unintuitive card.

The GDS2 has taught me to glean wisdom from both grains of truth and heaps of bull.

Jay Treat

I've been designing different kinds of games for over a decade now and I can tell you as a fact: Every game sucks before it is playtested. Every single game in the history of humankind without exception was awful the first time its inventor shared it with others. Granted, more experienced designers like Mark Rosewater, Reiner Knizia or Klaus Teuber will often produce a first draft with more merit and fewer flaws, but it is inevitable that the game will not have accounted for some player psychology, some corner case in the rules or even the way it really feels to play the game. Getting the perspective of others is a game designer's most vital resource—far beyond experience, talent, knowledge of other games or any kind of education.

It stands to reason, then, that a game designed collaboratively in the first place—provided you can avoid the too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen problem—will usually be better than a game designed by a single person. This is a big part of Magic's recipe for success. Remember that even Richard Garfield's original brilliance did not bear fruit without the help of the Philly Playtesters.

So we come to September 29th when it is revealed that GDS2 finalists will be dependant on contributions from the community on the Magic Wiki. I was concerned, to put it mildly. "The Internet is a crazy place filled with the crazy opinions of crazy people."--Sir Rudyard Kipling (not really). I was wrong. Well, I was right about the crazy, but I was wrong to worry. Collaborating with the Magic community via the Wiki and Twitter has been amazing. These folks are easily the brightest, most passionate fans you'll ever meet and their efforts have improved mine even more than I could have imagined.

Playtesting card games is a lot of work because you have to format, print, cut and card-ize them: effort that five-day challenges are not particularly conducive to. The next best thing is to get a lot of smart eyes on your cards, thinking of the things you didn't. From simple mistakes like typos and omitted values to problems like a card being busted or unfun all the way to more nebulous stuff like needing more vanilla creatures or wanting a particular type of effect or scaling back on the number of keywords, others will catch the things you didn't have the time to.

There is also a trap here: You cannot follow everyone's advice and you cannot allow anyone else to do your thinking for you. Try as they might, no one has the same vision you do and no one else is responsible for the entire finished product. You must consider what people offer you and decide for yourself how solid their argument is and whether their idea will improve your work or muddy it. Even if you get an unequivocally fabulous idea from two contributors, they may not mesh together and you will have to choose one and reject the other.

Nothing's ever easy, but easy never led to awesome.

Scott Van Essen

The importance of Playtesting, Simplicity, Listening to Experts, and Playtesting.

It is one thing to believe, it is another to grok.

Through his articles, and GDS1&2, Mark Rosewater has distilled a decade and a half worth of design lessons into weekly morsels that I have snatched up with enthusiasm. I absorbed most of them, but there were two areas where I just didn't get it.

On multiple occasions, and several times directly addressed to me, MaRo stressed the importance of playtesting your designs. I believed him on some level, but I always had an excuse not to. It was too close to deadline; the cards weren't ready; it was too much work; it's hard to find a partner. All of those excuses combined with overconfidence in my predictive abilities, and through six design challenges, I never once playtested my cards. I made some that I'm proud of, and some others that I know I would have caught in playtest.

Play with your cards.

Finally, for the first challenge of the finals, I saw the light. I had a rough draft a day before deadline (don't wait for perfection, just get something down that you can work with). I sleeved up my little slips of paper...and it was a Revelation. In two test draws, I knew that I didn't have enough enablers for one of my mechanics. In two games I knew that it was also underpowered and led to unfun choices.

I really believed that I could deduce and appreciate the consequences of my designs. I could not have been more wrong. Actually sleeving up and playing does two critical things. First, it changes your mindset. You ask how the cards help you win. You experience the fun (or you don't). Second, the randomness of the game forces card combinations you never would have thought of. With each new draw, you examine multiple lines of play, even if you don't play the card at all.

Play AGAINST your cards.

Make sure you know what happens when your opponent doesn't cooperate.

Don't design your cards in Magical Christmas Land. Playtesting will show you where your themes are strong enough to hang together and where it was all silk and butterflies and wishful thinking.

Play against other cards

You can test your designs against other cards from your set, but far more important is to play them against other sets. Find some old limited decks you have lying around. It will keep your power level in the right ballpark, and it will tell you if your designs are too parasitic. If they don't interact outside your set, you're just digging a hole. Make sure your cards are open-ended enough to play with anything from Alpha to Zendikar.

Trust Magic

The other recurring theme that I couldn't Absorb was the lesson of simplicity. As a designer you have soooo many cool ideas. You want all these intricate interlocking pieces with crazy options and depth of play. You want to show off. DON'T!!! The most telling comment I got from Gleemax in GDS1 was "...the object of design is not to outwit the players." This time around, I've tried to take that advice to heart. I sweated blood to make everything as simple as I could. And I did a pretty good job. But then I playtested (see!!!) and it was obvious that my cards were cool and fun, but definitely not common. It was suddenly clear. Magic really does let you get interesting combos, skill-testing play, and plain old fun from even the simplest of cards (what an amazing game!!!). Thanks to the paradigm of building a whole set, I was able to simply "push a few cards up to uncommon" and the set got stronger.

Trust MaRo

If I had listened to MaRo sooner, I guarantee I would have made it at least another round in GDS1. I might even have written this article from Renton four years ago. Don't learn your lessons the hard way, and don't wait for a Second Chance that may never come. Trust the experts. Don't make excuses for yourself. Make the hard choices and do the less glamorous legwork. Playtest, Simplify, then playtest again.

I believed MaRo when he said those things before. Now I grok why it's true.

Jonathon Loucks (again)

You always have more ideas.

Really.

My biggest problem in the first challenge was falling in love with certain cards too early. I had pretty much all of my 18 cards selected by Saturday night. Throughout Sunday, though, problems would present themselves. This card is probably uncommon. This card is too good. This card is uncommon. You have two land destruction spells. This card is really uncommon. This card is too complicated. Seriously, uncommon.

By then I had already convinced myself that my 18 cards were good. In fact, I still think each card stands well on its own. In the context of my 18 cards, though, I have too many uncommons, too many complicated cards, and too many land destruction spells. I feel like I was able to look at the total interactions of my cards mechanically, like the power and toughness spread, combos, vanillas that made sense, simple spells that made sense, etc. However, I had a hard time looking at the 18 cards as a set of 18commons. I could justify enough each card at common, but there is no way my 18 cards are common enough as a whole.

I was too afraid to get rid of my cool ideas because of how much I liked what they were doing for the 18 cards. I can't get rid of Blackout because I really want to show off a non-morph face down card, and I can't get rid of Blast Mining because it's a perfect dig card! What I couldn't see was that one of them really had to go, for the health of the 18. I was just so scared that I would trash a design I liked and end up settling on something worse.

I was too scared. I needed to have faith in myself that I have more good ideas. (Or heck, have faith that the wiki has more good ideas.) You can always do better – the key is recognizing when you've got to settle with what you've got. In the first challenge I was too cautious, and I settled too soon. My goal for the next challenge is to keep searching for the perfect card for the whole submission, and never settle until I absolutely have to.

Daniel Williams

When working on a creative project, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. After reading the judge's commentary on my design test, I knew I had a big job ahead of me. Deadsands' mechanics needed some serious work. The mistake I made, however, was spending most of the time I had been given for the challenge working on my mechanics at the expense of other parts of my submission.

I realized my blunder a bit too late and had to rush to finish my cards. In the process, I made several typographic and design errors that I could have been avoided had I allocated my time better.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you can't worry about perfection at the start of a project, especially if you're on a tight schedule. Concentrate on one aspect of your creation too much and you'll lose sight of other equally important details. Focus on the big picture first. It will be much easier to perfect your work once that picture is in place.

On a related note, take full advantage of outside help. Everyone has a slightly different perspective, so the more eyes you have viewing your work, the more likely it will be that someone will catch a mistake that you weren't even looking out for. Additionally, willing volunteers can lift a lot of weight off your shoulders by giving you ideas and Feedback that will allow you to complete a creative undertaking far faster than you could working by yourself.

Had I realized this during the challenge, I would have spent more time updating my wiki. If I had done so, many of my errors would have been noticed and subsequently corrected.

I have one more piece of advice for you. After making mistakes, there are two things you need to do: learn from those mistakes and make sure you don't repeat them. I've done the first of these two already and will do my best to accomplish the second.

Jonathan Woodward

I love games and game design, but my "day job" is economics research. Competing in the Great Designer Search 2 has made me realize some surprising parallels between writing an empirical economics paper and designing for Magic.

In economics research, the first thing we need is a question to investigate. "Does increasing the percentage of immigrants affect the average wage for other residents of a city?" A good question gives purpose to our research. When designing a Magic mechanic, this role is filled by either top-down flavor, or by a specific need. When designing my world for the GDS2, I had the idea that ambient spray from geysers of mana would lend power to enchantments, but I wasn't sure what form that would take.

In economics, the next thing we must do is read up on what people have done before. This puts our research into context. The Magic equivalent is to figure out how your mechanic fits into the rest of the set. I already had another mechanic, Favored, that would make people put auras into their decks. However, I needed something for players to do when they happened to actually draw those auras that didn't risk substantial card disadvantage, but that also didn't make Favored too strong.

Once we know where our economic question fits, we then need a theory that gets at the essence of what we're asking. Perhaps the skills of the immigrants are complementary with those of the natives, making both groups more productive together than when working alone? For Magic, the equivalent could be to distill the desired flavor down to the simplest implementation. Magic does have a history of auras that dodge destruction, such as Rancor and Flickering Ward, or that just grant extra value on entering or leaving the battlefield, like Galvanic Arc and Griffin Guide, but I wanted something both simpler and unique. A discussion on the wiki made me realize that if auras had their own creatures built in, then card disadvantage is inherently avoided, and so I wouldn't have to build compensating card advantage into the design. Incarnate was born! Instead of casting an aura on a creature, you could pay to put it directly onto the battlefield attached to a new token.

Armed with a theoretical model of how people behave, the final step in economic research is to examine actual data. Are greater numbers of immigrants associated with higher wages? Or is something else going on, so we'd need to revise the theoretical model and try again? The Magic equivalent is development and playtesting. Sadly, the GDS2 leaves little time for development, but tweaking the numbers is still important. I realized that players might often place the aura card onto the battlefield by itself, to represent both aura and token. To make the game state as easy as possible to read, I decided to make the tokens colorless and 0/0.

No matter how sure we are that our economics paper is good, we can't really know until colleagues tell us so. In the GDS2, I've been learning this the hard way. The judges liked Incarnate, but were less thrilled with some of my other mechanics. With outside reviews and suggestions on the wiki, I'm trying to improve those mechanics. This is why we need your feedback! Next year, maybe one (or more!) of us will be able to say, "My day job is Magic design."

Conclusion

Each of us is eager to share our appreciation for all the support we've gotten and goodness knows we've got more than a few people to thank. I asked everyone to curb that Impulse so we could do it once and spare the reader eight takes on gratitude. Here's what it comes down to: We're grateful to everyone at Wizards of the Coast not just for their feedback on our designs (which has been amazing), not just for the chance to be in this Search, but for putting so much skill, passion and energy into Magic, literally the best game ever made. We're thankful to everyone in the community who has given us feedback, pitched us card ideas, prodded some bold choices and reigned in some crazy ones, caught silly typos or cleaned our templating and those who have simply rooted for us. We literally couldn't compete without you. All of us owe a debt of gratitude to the people in our lives who accepted our eccentricity, supported our far-fetched endeavors and fostered our creativity. In a word, thanks.