We decided, with all the changes coming to Magic 2010, both in the forms of rules changes and the new cards, what better way than to get answers from Aaron Forsythe, the Director of Magic R&D as well as the Lead Designer on Magic 2010. Below are ten questions that Trick sent to him.

Hi, I'm Aaron Forsythe, Director of Magic R&D. I was a pro player for a few years (two PT Top 8's) before coming to Wizards to run magicthegathering.com in 2001. I now head the R&D department, overseeing design, development, creative, and editing.

What part have you played in the development of Magic 2010 as well as the changes coming with the set?

I was the lead designer on the Magic 2010 set, and was the catalyst and point man for the rules changes. (I had little to do with the changes to the tournament rules, although I am a fan of them.)

What do you think of these changes?

I think they were painful but necessary, and will end up mattering less and being easier to adapt to than most players imagine. Magic is too hard to learn, plain and simple, and we have to take steps to make that less true, even if that means upsetting a few apple carts along the way. We would do nothing to hurt the game intentionally; every decision we make is done so with the long-term health and growth of the game and its community in mind. Everyone here lives, eats, and breathes Magic.

Were there any you were not in favor of initially?

I was uncertain about mana burn leaving, but I've since become convinced of just how extraneous it was. The new combat rules were a tough nut to crack; once we agreed to take damage off the stack, coming up with a system that let damage prevention and regeneration work intuitively in multi-blocking scenarios was tough, which is where the ordered blocking thing came from. My only regret there is that it is way harder to explain than it is to play with that particular rule.

[smartads]Obviously Wizards has tested and explored these changes in depth before announcing them, can you give us an idea of what sort of testing happened and how long you all worked on them?

The combat changes were being worked out during Shards of Alara design and development; you can see that cards like Carrion Thrash and Bloodpyre Elemental were worded such that the transition would have no effect on how they played. The rest of the changes were added sometime between Shards and M10 development. So the combat system in particular got almost a year of testing in our FFL [Ed. Note: FFL is the Future Future League, the internal league used for playtesting by Wizards] and limited playtests, with a variety of players from Pro Tour winners to beginners.

Combat is drawing a great deal of the attention in terms of changes seen to be negative. While the use of the stack in combat was counter-intuitive it was still inline with the way the rest of the game worked. This is seen as an illogical change as it trades one counter-intuitive issue for another. Why make the change?

People get hung up on the "other forms of damage use the stack so should combat" thing, when that's the wrong way to look at it. Untapping your permanents at the beginning of your turn doesn't use the stack and can't be responded to. Drawing your card for the turn doesn't use the stack and can't be responded to. Same for the act of declaring attackers and declaring blockers, and the same for all the stuff that goes on during the end step (like discarding down to seven and damage clearing). The only part of the game that used the stack other than spells and abilities from cards was combat damage. Players just didn't get that; we saw it time and time again. That might be hard to believe if you are surrounded by knowledgeable players or play online, but it is very, very true. There was this big inconsistency in the rules and it tripped up players over and over, so we removed it.

Some players fear that Wizards is making these sort of changes out of a desire to draw in new players without regard for current players, do you have any comment on this? Obviously the game is meant to grow.

If we wanted new players without regard for older players, we could have done something really radical like change the cardback and make everyone start over. In no way is that the case. Yes, these changes were made to get new players. The gaming environment has changed in the past decade. Video games have all these great learning tools and systems that we do not, which makes the barrier to learn a complex "paper" game like Magic even higher. We have to be willing to adapt. If we just kept catering to the same crowd, it would shrink over time just by natural attrition, eventually making this whole thing not viable. No one wants that. We need to stay ahead of any negative trends and not wait until something horrible actually goes wrong to try and fix things. And the enfranchised player has to understand that we do tons and tons of stuff for him all the time, like offer a robust prize-laden organized play system, a website brimming with content every day, complex new sets and card mechanics and limited environments, the list goes on. It's easy to latch on to something you don't like and think you're being forgotten, but we know who's out there buying boxes... we just want to make sure there's more of them.

These changes are being compared to the major changes which came out with Sixth edition, how do you compare these rules changes in terms of effect on the game?

These changes are far less severe, but at the same time they are also less clearly necessary to the enfranchised player. These changes are meant to fix problems that are below the surface of what most people see or read about on major websites or at big events--they're targeted at players that many of your readers don't interact with, so it may be hard to understand our motives.

Tell us the truth, did Gleemax make you all put these changes into place so that he could squash his rival Mogg Fanatic once and for all?

Look, I love Mogg Fanatic. My original screen name after Tempest came out was "moggfanatic". I put Mogg Fanatic in Tenth Edition. These were hard changes to make, but people just have to trust us that they're for the best.

Thanks for your time. ManaNation and its fans appreciate you answering our questions concerning these rules changes in Magic 2010. Do you have anything you'd like to add?

To people that still don't like these rules, the best analogy I can make for you is that they're like an immunization shot or a tax increase — things you don't particulatly want to be subjected to in the short term but that have a long-lasting positive effect elsewhere, often in ways you can't notice. You have to put some amount of faith in us that it will all work out in the end.

Indeed. We truly do appreciate Aaron taking time to answer our questions!