33 Years Later, Magic’s Head Designer Reveals One of His Biggest Regrets

At a glance, the core mechanics of Magic: The Gathering are fairly simple. You can play one land per turn, generating the magical energy called mana that you need to summon creatures. Attack your opponents with those creatures, reduce their life totals to zero, and you win. Instants and sorceries represent magic cast in the moment, while other cards remain on the battlefield as “permanents.” But once you examine how Magic classifies those permanents — and why artifacts and enchantments are considered fundamentally different things — it all becomes much more convoluted.