Andy and Anthony talk with Ryan Saxe about his latest Magic passion project. Inspired by one of his favorite video game genres, AutoBattlers, Ryan has been working to create a Magic variant that incorporates the feeling of quick mini-games and constant upgrades and expansion of your arsenal. In his format, players face of in a series of mini-games with only a few cards available to each player. After each quick game, players get to modify and expand their available pool of cards to use by trading with a random new selection of cards from the Cube list. Players are eliminated as they accrue a certain number of losses leaving one the champion.

The three talk about the design process, challenges and successes Ryan’s had through iterating on the rules system, and their experience drafting the AutoBattler cube.

View all cards mentioned in this episode

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps

0:00 - AI Corner

13:01 - Introduction to Ryan’s new format

14:20 - What is an auto battler?

17:59 - How did Ryan go about applying the patterns of an auto battler to Magic?

28:42 - How does Ryan’s auto battler format work?

46:16 - Designing the rules system vs. designing the cube list

53:22 - A deep dive on the design details of the auto battler

1:33:45 - How Anthony would teach the auto battler format

1:35:40 - Is it productive to describe this as an auto battler?

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Musical production by DJ James Nasty.