Nuts & Bolts

For the Fifth Dawn theme deck, see Nuts and Bolts.

Nuts & Bolts is an annual article series on Magicthegathering.com started by Mark Rosewater in 2009. In the series, he presents practical advice to people interested in designing their own Magic set. While the primary audience for these articles mainly includes amateur Magic designers, they also give a technical behind-the-scenes perspective on how Wizards of the Coast R&D make Magic sets.

Article list

#	Year	Subject	Article	Content
1	2009	Card codes	link	Explains the system R&D uses to make sure everyone is talking about the same card.
2	2010	Design skeleton	link	Introduces the most important tool in designing a set: the design skeleton. It makes use of card codes.
3	2011	Commons	link	Filling in the design skeleton, starting with the common cards.
4	2012	Higher rarities	link	Filling in all the other rarities.
5	2013	Playtesting	link	How best to use playtesting to gather feedback and make improvements on a set.
6	2014	Iteration	link	Discusses the concept of iteration and how to incrementally improve a set.
7	2015	Stages of Design	link	Explains the three different stages of design (Vision Design, Set Design, and Play Design), pointing out how priorities shift as the set evolves.
8	2016	Troubleshooting	link	Answers several questions about common problems that can happen in the early to mid-design stages.
9	2017	Evaluation	link	How to look at a set as a whole and figure out what fine-tuning it still needs.
10	2018	Creative elements	link	How you interweave mechanical and creative elements into a cohesive set. Discusses top-down and bottom-up design. Detailing how to handle card names, creature types, and flavor text.
11	2019	Art	link	Talks about the importance of using art in later playtests and how to incorporate it into a set.
12	2020 (1)	Limited (mechanics)	link	Making sure mechanics work for Limited play.
13	2020 (2)	Limited (themes)	link	Building out themes for Limited play.
14	2021	Design skeleton revisited	link	Discussing the updated design skeleton used for every Magic set.
15	2022	Initial Ideation	link	Covers how to build the initial ideas for Magic sets.
16	2023	Structural support	link	Make sure sets have all the elements they need to work properly, especially in Limited play.
17	2024	Play Boosters	link	All the changes to the design skeleton came about because of the shift from Draft Boosters to Play Boosters.
18	2025 (1)	Finding Your Mechanics, Part 1	link	How to make a mechanic from scratch. How to tell how much design space it has.
19	2025 (2)	Finding Your Mechanics, Part 2	link	How much space a mechanic should take up in a set. What rarities it should be at. How to balance it or get a rough estimate to playtest with.