Making Magic

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Making Magic is a weekly column about Magic design written by Head Designer Mark Rosewater and published on magicthegathering.com. It has run continuously since the site's launch in 2002 and is one of Rosewater's primary methods of communicating design decisions to the public. Regular installments include mailbag columns, behind-the-scenes design stories, and the annual State of Design.[1]

Articles

See also: List of Making Magic articles: 2002–2010, 2011–2020, 2021–present

Making Magic is about the design of Magic: The Gathering, especially Vision Design, and sometimes about game design generally. Many articles are part of regular series or fit into the lifecycle of a new set; others are one-off explorations of certain Magic- or design-related topics.[2][3] The column is published weekly on Mondays; some articles are pushed to later days of the week to match spoiler seasons or to adjust for holidays, and a few weeks pass without new articles during the winter holiday season each year.[3]

Design stories

The majority of Making Magic articles are focused on the designs of specific sets and cards. During the preview seasons, a few weeks are spent introducing the set's Vision Design and Set Design teams[a] and telling the story of how its mechanical themes were chosen. Once a set is released, additional articles are spent on card-by-card design stories.[3] Starting with Throne of Eldraine, Rosewater started publishing annotated copies of Vision Design handoffs—internal documents written for the transition from Vision to Set Design—for most new sets and some historical sets.[4]

State of Design

Every year since Rosewater became Head Designer, he has published a State of Design article evaluating the successes and failures of the last year's major releases.[5] Early State of Design columns also included goal-setting for the upcoming year, but Rosewater abandoned this due to how far ahead R&D works.[6]

Color pie

Rosewater has written many articles about the five colors, their mechanical strengths and weaknesses, and their creative philosophies (collectively the "color pie"). In 2021, he published "Let's Talk Color Pie", a collection of every article and podcast he'd produced on the subject. "Mechanical Color Pie 2017" and "Mechanical Color Pie 2021 are extensive lists of game mechanics and their relationships to each color.

Nuts & Bolts

Main article: Nuts & Bolts

Nuts and Bolts is an annual column targeted at hobbyist designers creating custom Magic sets. It's also a more detailed and technical behind-the-scenes look than other columns.[7] The design skeleton, a "blueprint" for making use of all the card slots in a set, was first introduced in "Design Skeleton" and "Filling in the Design Skeleton"; it was updated in "Design Skeleton Revisited" and again in "Play Boosters".

Mailbags

Mailbag columns, in which Rosewater answers reader-submitted questions, have been a regular feature of Making Magic since its earliest years.[2] From Oath of the Gatewatch through The Brothers' War, a mailbag column called Odds & Ends was conducted for every major release.[8][9][10][11] Starting with Phyrexia: All Will Be One, Odds & Ends switched to once per year.[3]

Storm Scale and Rabiah Scale

See also: Rosewater Scale

The Storm Scale originated on Rosewater's blog, but he has since written about it in Making Magic. Storm Scale articles provide in-depth explanations of each mechanic's rating, judged on a scale of popularity, design space, versatility, play design, and playability.[12] A few articles have also gone into detail on the Rabiah Scale; planes are rated on popularity, mechanical identity, creative identity, room for expansion, and story continuation.[13]

Lessons from non-Magic topics

Some articles draw design insights from non-Magic sources. Among them is Topical Blend, a semi-regular column in which readers vote on a Magic-related and non-Magic-related topic for Rosewater to combine.[14] These articles, Topical Blend and otherwise, are often personal: examples include "Topical Blend #1 – To Err Is Human", which compares Rosewater's mistakes in dating to his mistakes as a designer; "Life Lessons" (part one and part two), which relates general life lessons Rosewater has learned to Magic design; and "Like Father, Like Son", a tribute to Rosewater's recently deceased father, which relates lessons about game design his father taught him.

And Counting

Every hundred weeks, Rosewater indexes his most recent articles and rates them on a five-star scale, following the name scheme of the original "One Hundred and Counting". Later years tend to have better ratings due to Rosewater's self-assessed improvement as a writer.[3]

History

In 2001, Wizards of the Coast set the goal of establishing a better web presence, which led to the creation of magicthegathering.com in 2002. Due to Mark Rosewater's background in writing and communications, including his work for The Duelist, he was asked to come up with content for the website. Making Magic was one of two weekly columns that Rosewater set up, the other being Latest Developments.[1][15][16]

Notes

  1. ↑ Set Design team introductions are usually introduced by that team's lead, not by Mark Rosewater.

References

  1. ↑ a b Mark Rosewater (January 25, 2016). "No Two See the Same Maro". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on January 28, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b Mark Rosewater (November 24, 2003). "One Hundred and Counting". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Mark Rosewater (February 24, 2025). "One Thousand Two Hundred and Counting". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  4. ↑ Mark Rosewater (July 21, 2025). "Edge of Eternities Vision Design Handoff, Part 1". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  5. ↑ Mark Rosewater (August 11, 2025). "State of Design 2025". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on August 11, 2025.
  6. ↑ Mark Rosewater (August 12, 2025). "I was interested to see what your 2026 goals were but the article ended before we got there.". Blogatog. Tumblr.
  7. ↑ Mark Rosewater (April 7, 2025). "Nuts & Bolts #17: Finding Your Mechanics, Part 1". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  8. ↑ Mark Rosewater (May 5, 2017). "Eight Hundred and Counting". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  9. ↑ Mark Rosewater (June 3, 2019). "Nine Hundred and Counting". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  10. ↑ Mark Rosewater (February 22, 2021). "One Thousand and Counting". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  11. ↑ Mark Rosewater (February 27, 2023). "One Thousand One Hundred and Counting". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  12. ↑ Mark Rosewater (December 19, 2022). "Storm Scale: Throne of Eldraine through Strixhaven, Part 1". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  13. ↑ Mark Rosewater (May 13, 2024). "The Rabiah Scale, Part 3". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
  14. ↑ Mark Rosewater (December 5, 2016). "Topical Blend: Breaking News". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on December 5, 2016.
  15. ↑ Mark Rosewater (January 2, 2012). "Turning Ten". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on September 14, 2015.
  16. ↑ Mark Rosewater (December 4, 2006). "Making "Making Magic"". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on 2021-04-29.
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