Magic: The Gathering's Play Design Announced

Since last year, Wizards of the Coast has banned four Magic: The Gathering cards in the Standard format: Smuggler's Copter, Reflector Mage, Emrakul, the Promised End, and Felidar Guardian. While some players were happy to see these overpowered cards get banned for the sake of a healthier and more diverse format, many voiced their frustrations on the company's decisions --Why create those cards in the first place if they're going to get banned anyway? Players spent money to acquire those cards only to leave them dusting on shelves and binders weeks later because they've become unplayable. Now it looks like Wizards of the Coast is making big moves to make sure they won't make the same mistake of printing cards that hurt constructed play.

On his Blogatog, head designer Mark Rosewater announced a new group within R&D called Play Design. According to Rosewater, Play Design's purpose "is to be a group solely dedicated to the health of tournament environments, to make sure that playing Magic in structured settings is as enjoyable as possible." Dan Burdick was hired to run Play Design, a team which also converted two Pro Tour 8'ers playtesters (Melissa DeTora and Andrew Brown) into fulltime employees. They're planning to hire more experienced players to join the team.

Rosewater concluded by saying that Dan will most likely release an article on June, introducing the members of Play Design. Hopefully, this new team will help bring a lot of players back to playing Standard.

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